


098 - Dinosaur Bones & Stardust

by storiesaboutvan



Category: Catfish and the Bottlemen (Band)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 03:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17438870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesaboutvan/pseuds/storiesaboutvan
Summary: Filling the prompt “would you be able to write something where Van flies from another country to Australia see you, because you’re Australian. kinda fluffy, maybe he could take you out for dinner or something because you only have 24 hours together before he has to fly back to return to tour.”





	098 - Dinosaur Bones & Stardust

It was almost four in the morning and he was still sitting on the bar stool talking to you. Most people had either moved on to clubs, before the lockout laws meant they were trapped on the empty streets, or had piled into the back seats of ubers. Not Van, though. He'd arrived just before midnight with his band and crew. His accent was so out of place in the Australian pub. You'd listen to them talk about the show they'd played, and watched as people took photos with them. They had drunk, not a lot but enough to overestimate their ability to play pool. You kept count of a number of times one of the balls would fly off the table and roll away. You knew Van had been watching you, but you also had a job to do. Beer to pour, tables to clear, drunks to appease. When he sat down on the empty stool at one am, you asked him what he wanted.

He never moved. He waited patiently when you served people, and beamed when you returned to continue the conversation. When his friends all left for the hotel, reminding him that he needed to get up at five for a radio show, he bid them goodnight and turned his attention back to you quickly. He was in the city for three nights, and if he wasn’t in soundcheck, an interview, or playing a show, he was wherever you were. Sometimes at the pub, sometimes in your bed, your shower, your car. You kissed him hard out the front of his hotel when he left for the airport. He looked heartbroken, but you knew it wasn't the start of something more. Your lives were worlds apart, and even if they weren't he was never home.

Even though you'd added each other on social media and swapped numbers, you didn't expect to hear from him. However, he called almost every day. The line crackled, and sometimes he couldn't talk for long, but he said he just wanted to hear your voice. You tried to let your crush die, but he liked every single post you made on Instagram, he got Snapchat just to watch your singing Stories, and he sent you long emails about nothing in particular.

He had a few days off between shows on the North American leg of the tour. He flew to you and you spent the whole time entwined around each other. You surfaced for food, and went out to town for a few hours, but you really just wanted each other as close as humanly possible. When you sat inside the airport in front of the huge glass wall and watched him board the plane, your heart broke. When you let Van sit for hours at the bar you thought it was going to fun. Sleep with a guy in a band, have a laugh with the band like tourists, cross a few things off your bucket list. You never signed up for love.

It didn’t get easier. Each day you missed him more. Every word he wrote to you made you ache. You stupidly let yourself dream of Europe. Of Cheshire. You imagined his house. Imagined meeting Mary and Bernie and his fluffy brown puppy. It got to the point where you'd almost cry if you heard their songs on the radio. Triple J was banned, and your friends acted like music stopped being made in 1999.

"You could move, you know," Jake said. He sat on the small patch of dying grass out the back of your place. He drank from the beer bottle and looked at you.

"I'm not moving to the fucking U.K., Jake,"

"Why not? No offence, but it's not like you have a hell of a lot of ties here. You can pretend you're going to uni, but you've deferred for, what, three years already? You don't see your family that much anyway. You'll make new friends. Get bar work. Be with Van,"

"What you are describing is a world where fanfiction comes to life. This is actually reality, so… Nah, mate. It's not going to happen,"

"Y/N. Trump is president. Lemonade didn't win best album. Bowie is dead. We're living in an apocalyptic nightmare; fiction is the new reality. Nothing to say you with Van McCann won't happen."

Jake seemed so sure. You laid back on the grass with him and got more and more drunk. He went to his room, leaving you alone. It was Summer in Australia, and parts of the country were burning in 45 degree heat. The night was only just cooler, and you looked up at the stars and thought. Your phone buzzed from your pocket and you looked at Van's name on the screen for a few seconds before answering it.

He was somewhere in Europe, but not home, he said. He said he missed you like crazy; said he was thinking about after the tour. You told him not to. The tone of your voice was cold and he asked what was wrong, but you changed the subject and got him talking about something, anything, else. When he had to hang up, you went back inside and walked across the uneven floorboards down the hall. You crawled into bed and cried; curled up into the tiniest form you could make. Like if you were small, there was less body to feel all the big, big hurt.

...

You'd not heard from Van as much in the days following Jake's meant-to-be-pep talk. The lack of likes on posts and the lack of views on Stories left you sad and lonely. Jake made you go out and see Hidden Figures and it almost helped. It was a fucking good film.

"I have a surprise for you," he said as he pulled into the driveway. He made you close your eyes at the front door. He walked you down the hall past your bedroom and his, holding his hands over your closed eyes from behind. It was awkward and took a while to get to the lounge room out the back of the house. "Ready?" Jake said, and you could tell whatever he'd done was something he was proud of. You hoped it wasn't like that time he sold the outdoor furniture to buy a pinball machine that neither of you even used.

When Jake's hands left your face and he stepped away from you, you opened your eyes. Van was standing in the centre of the room. You gasped, and Van smiled over at Jake. "Have fuuuuuun," Jake called. You didn't say goodbye as he left through the front door. Van walked to you and pulled you into him. You scrunched the back of his jacket into your fists as you tried to crawl into his body. You started to cry, even though you didn't want to 

"I fucking missed you, Y/N," he said. He hushed you and rocked you on the spot. He undressed you in the middle of your house and you melted into each other for hours.

…

"Jake says you're thinking about moving over to the U.K.," Van said. He was lying on the grass under the one tree in your backyard. It was hotter inside than it was outside, and he was dying in the heat. He was so unused to the Australian weather. He didn't own shorts, so wore underwear and nothing else. You sprayed him with a fine mist of cold water from the bottle you kept in the fridge.

"No. Jake says I should be thinking about it,"

"Jake's right. You should. Come and live with me." Van sat up a little and looked at you seriously. He reached over and took off the sunglasses you were wearing; they were his and you liked to wear anything that belonged to him.

"I can't just pack up and move country, Van. We've probably spent a week together in real time, you know? What if we actually hate each other?"

"We don't. You know that,"

"I'll get lonely without my friends. You'll always be on tour. It won't work,"

"Jake can come. He and Larry would get along," Van said. You could see he had thought it through, and believed that there was only one logical way to move forward. You shook your head. He sat up completely and crossed his legs. You stayed lying still; too hot to move. "The other day I read this thing about humans, right. About how there's nothing new anymore. Makes sense. Old music comes back. Fashion and all that. But, it's like that for our actual bodies too. We're just made of old stuff like dinosaur bones and stardust," Van said and he spoke quickly and his hands flew around in gestures that didn't really help explain his story but were lovely nonetheless.

"Dinosaur bones and stardust," you repeated. He nodded and smiled.

"And the way I see it is that you and me got the same stardust. We got the same bits of the universe in us, right, and that's why we can't stay away from each other. We're the same. So, you have to come and live with me. It's written in history, see."

It was easily the most stupid thing you'd heard. Ever. Bad science. However, it was also, and more importantly, the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to you. It was honest and he believed it with all of his aching heart. Good logic. You looked up at him and tried to not cry.

"You could move here," you said quietly, trying to quell the intensity of the moment. Of the feelings in you. Of the want to leave Australia and never come back.

"I'd die in the heat," Van whispers, "And when you think 'bout us, you think about us there,"

"You don't know that,"

"I don’t?"

You breathed out a shaky breath and sprayed yourself with the water. You looked at him watching you, then closed your eyes. As a sweat started to pool under you, you thought you'd only just made the decision. The decision though, was written in stone from the moment Van walked into the bar on his first night in the city. According to him, it was written in the stardust that now lived in the walls of your heart and in the marrow of his bones. You were born indecisive, and it led you to never starting uni, never buying a house, never forming connections to any one place or any one person. You were free-falling through life until stepping off the plane in the U.K. and settling into the bed you would share with Van for years. Dinosaur bones and stardust.


End file.
